Denies "punting" on the Confederate flag issue.

On Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press, GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee reiterated to Chuck Todd that he still believes the debate over the Confederate flag is “not an issue” for 2016.

But now that Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) has made clear her thoughts on the matter, guest-host of Fox and Friends Ed Henry wondered why Huckabee had been “punting” on the issue, despite now seemingly having an opinion on the matter.

“I didn’t punt at all,” Huckabee told Henry on Tuesday morning. “I just simply said that the President of the United States has nothing to do with what flags go on a capitol’s grounds.”

Huckabee continued by suggesting that the question of the flag was a matter of him being “baited” into answering whether “South Carolina is a racist state.”

“As a frequent visitor to South Carolina, I look at this objectively,” he said. “You’ve got a female governor who is of Indian descent, you have the only elected African-American U.S. senator in the South from a state of 4.8 million people, elected largely by people who are mostly white. That’s not racism.”

And that’s when things took an odd turn.

“I keep hearing people saying we need more conversations about race,” said Huckabee. “Actually we don’t need more conversations. What we need is conversions because the reconciliations that changes people is not a racial reconciliation, it’s a spiritual reconciliation when people are reconciled to God.”

“When I love God and I know that God created other people regardless of their color as much as He made me,” continued the former Governor. “I don’t have a problem with racism. It’s solved.”